Did you know the average heart beats over 100,000 times per day? Your heart pumps about 1.5 gallons of blood every minute through 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. The heart, the size of a clenched fist, does more physical work than any other muscle in the body. At 70 years of age, an average human heart has beat more than 2.5 billion times.
The human heart is designed to remain strong and reliable for a hundred years or longer. We do not die because our heart has reached its limit of beats in our lifetime. Instead our heart, generally speaking, stops beating from some other cause or disease which causes our death.
As we age, we become more concerned about our physical health. We begin thinking about how to keep our heart healthy and strong to increase our length and quality of life. We want our heart beating as long as possible. Therefore we eat more fruits and vegetables, consume less fatty foods, exercise more, stop smoking and drinking alcohol, drink less caffeinated beverages, reduce stress, and a host of other things to improve heart health.
Cardiologist claim the best way to have better heart health is to add a few minutes a day of enjoyable movement to your daily routine. This help you become fitter and live longer. Exercising regularly is one of the best ways to keep your heart strong and ward off aging.
But there is within us another heart that has also pounded billions of times. This heart also requires proper diet and exercise to remain strong and healthy to ward off heart disease. It is our spiritual heart. It throbs minute by minute. It beats daily with our thoughts, our affections, our choices, and our attitudes. With this heart we determine how we act, speak, respond to situations, relate to God and fellow man.
With our spiritual heart we determine if we’ll trust the Lord, choose to be gracious, humble, kind, patient and loving. Or, instead, with this heart we may decide to be boastful, prideful, greedy, bitter, jealous, complaining, judgmental, unforgiving, and unloving.
With this heart we can choose to submit to God and His word, and His wisdom found in His word, or we can harden this heart in unbelief and live in denial and rebellion to the Lord and His wisdom found in Scripture.
Proverbs 4:23 state, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it springs the issues of life.” How healthy is your spiritual heart? Are you caring for your spiritual heart as much as you are for your fleshly heart? Are you exercising your spiritual heart? Are you spiritual fit?
How’s your weight? Do you need to shed the weight of those unnecessary burdens, worries, anxieties, and sins you are carrying?
How’s your pulse? Are you maintaining a steady rhythm of gratitude, praise, and prayer to the Lord?
How’s your blood pressure? Is your level of trust in the Lord greater than your level of unbelief and doubt?
How’s your diet? Are you enjoying your daily intake of the life-giving nutrients from God’s word?
How’s your exercise routine? Are you exercising your faith each Sunday in worship, and in the week helping someone, praying for someone, and showing compassion for someone?
Have you checked your spiritual heart lately? To stay spiritually fit, and maintain a long healthy relationship with God, regularly consult with the Great Physician. — Tom
